Related papers: Relative Likelihood for Life as a Function of Cosm…
Cosmic rays can penetrate planetary atmospheres driving the formation of prebiotic molecules, which are important for the origin of life. We calculate the Galactic cosmic ray fluxes in the habitable zone of five nearby, well-studied…
Whereas the Solar System has Mars and Europa as the best candidates for finding fossil/extant life as we know it - based on complex carbon compounds and liquid water - the 263 (non-pulsar) planetary systems around other stars as known at 15…
In a previous study published in Astrobiology, we focused on the evolution of habitability of a 10 M_E super-Earth planet orbiting a star akin to the Sun. This study was based on a concept of planetary habitability in accordance to the…
The ease of interstellar rocket travel is an issue with implications for the long term fate of our own and other civilizations and for the much-debated number of technological civilizations in the Galaxy. We show that the physical barrier…
In this review we explore aspects of the field of astrobiology from an astronomical viewpoint. We therefore focus on the origin of life in the context of planetary formation, with additional emphasis on tracing the most abundant volatile…
The currently standard theory of cosmic structure formation posits that the present-day clumpy appearance of the universe developed through gravitational amplification of the matter density fluctuations that are generated in the very early…
The thermodynamic dissipation theory for the origin of life asserts a thermodynamic imperative for the origin of life, suggesting that the fundamental molecules of life originated as self-organized molecular photon dissipative structures…
Star formation history in galaxies is strongly correlated to their present-day colors and the Hubble sequence can be considered as a sequence of different star formation history. Therefore we can model the cosmic star formation history…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
I review some recent progress made in our understanding of galaxy evolution and the cosmic history of star formation. Like bookends, the results obtained from deep ground-based spectroscopy and from the Hubble Deep Field imaging survey put…
From the time the first stars formed over 13 billion years ago to the present, star formation has had an unexpectedly dynamic history. At first, the star formation rate density increased dramatically, reaching a peak 10 billion years ago…
How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does it need to be inside the temperate zone? are systems with hot Jupiters…
Within the framework of an eternal inflationary scenario, a natural question regarding the production of eternal bubbles is the essential condition requires to have a universe capable of generating life. In either an open or a closed…
A star will become brighter and brighter with stellar evolution, and the distance of its habitable zone will become farther and farther. Some planets outside the habitable zone of a host star during the main sequence phase may enter the…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
Earth is the only known inhabited planet in the universe to date. However, advancements in the fields of astrobiology and observational astronomy, and the discovery of large varieties of extremophiles with extraordinary capablities to…
High-energy astrophysical events that cause galaxy-scale extinctions have been proposed as a way to explain or mollify the Fermi Paradox, by making the universe at earlier times more dangerous for evolving life, and reducing its present-day…
Nearby Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) have been proposed as a possible cause of mass extinctions on Earth. Due to the higher event rate of GRBs at higher redshifts, it has been speculated that life as we know it may not survive above a certain…
The lifetime of protoplanetary disks is a crucial parameter for planet formation research. Observations of disk fractions in star clusters imply median disk lifetimes of 1 -- 3 Myr. This very short disk lifetime calls for planet formation…
Genomic complexity can be used as a clock with which the moment in which life originated can be measured. Some authors who have studied this problem have come to the conclusion that it is not possible that terrestrial life originated here…